So, I saw “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” on Wednesday, after an extremely long Tuesday. Ann had gotten tickets for us in advance, and so despite being up until 3am the night before, and having to get up early that morning, I was going regardless.
Also, the theater was having problems, unfortunately — the film stopped 3 times. So all-in-all, not an ideal experience.
I would have to say that the new film was most similar to the film version of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” In the same way that film zipped along, not letting the story breath, this one tried to do far too much, and cut out far too much while attempting it. My own views on the editing have already been presented here, so I won’t go into it.
The first thing noticeably cut from the film, was really the Order of the Phoenix. I mean, they’re there, but there’s so little that’s done with them.
I definitely wonder how this would have been if I hadn’t read the book, as this is the first film I’ve gone to see after reading them. The great part about this was that Ann didn’t spend the entire time tugging on my sleeve to point out every bit of meaningless minutiae that was left out. The problem is that my memory is better than hers, and so I remembered twice as many things as she usually does while she’s tugging on my sleeve.
Over all, the film was good and recommended, but I seriously hope that for once they do a full on director’s cut version when they release the DVD, because you can tell there’s more footage there, and I just don’t think a “cut scenes” section is going to do it.